Last week was a fantastic week of baseball, culminating with 3 game fives in the Divisional Series between the Tigers and Yankees, the Diamondbacks and Brewers and the Cardinals and Phillies. No matter how exciting the Divisional Series were, I still highly dislike best-of-five series because they’re just too short in my opinion (as a fan of an eliminated team). Last week, I attempted to predict the four series, and before I go into my Championship Series picks, I’ll recap the NLDS and ALDS series. Read more of this post

The last night of the season has set a pretty high mark for the postseason to follow, and while the next few weeks might not exactly match that excitement, I’m still looking forward to the playoffs. The current 5-7-7 playoff format is an easy one to hate when your team is 0-6 in their last two playoff appearances, but it applies a great pressure to win early, and to win at home to protect home field advantage. Over the past few years in the MLB, the playoffs have been great to watch, and I don’t think this year will be any different.

Well, this looks familiar doesn’t it? Last year the Rays won the AL East and faced the Rangers who won the AL West that year as well, the difference between last year’s series and this year’s is that the Rangers have home field advantage. Last year’s Divisional Series was one of the oddest series that I had seen in a while- a five game bash fest, in which the away team won each game (Rangers won that series). The road team scored at least 5 runs in all five games of the series last year, and this year I simply don’t think the same thing will happen. The Rays are trotting out “super stud” rookie pitcher Matt Moore who made quite a meteoric rise from AA Montgomery to Tampa Bay, tying the AAA Durham Bulls single game strikeout record with 13 Ks along the way, and the Rays will follow him up with David Price tomorrow. Looking at those two pitchers together brings me to this comparison: In 2008, the Rays made a lot of waves calling up a left handed fireballing pitcher from the minor leagues late in the season (Price), and this year the Rays brought up another left handed fireballing pitcher from the minor leagues late in the season (Moore). In 2008, Tampa made their first franchise World Series appearance, could Moore’s call up propel the Rays to their second WS appearance and possibly first Championship?

Tampa is going to have to pitch carefully to Texas’ lineup, the Rangers finished the regular season second in the league in home runs with 210 (Yankees were 1st with 222). At the same time, the Rangers are going to have their work cut out for them at bat, the Rays had the league’s 8th best team ERA (3.58), so this series will put the “Good hitting vs. Good pitching” question into action. My pick: Rays get revenge from last year and win this series in 4.

It’s certainly a welcome sight to see the Detroit Tigers in the playoffs again after a five year absence, and they’re carrying a great cast of players with them. That cast is led by their pitching ace Justin Verlander who paced the league with his 24 win season, 2.40 ERA and 0.92 WHIP, and is followed by first baseman Miguel Cabrera (.344 batting average, 30 home runs), catcher Victor Martinez (.330 avg, 103 RBI), and shortstop Jhonny Peralta (.299 avg, 21 home runs). The Yankees are a similarly built team, and will be sending one of the worst fantasy baseball pitchers CC Sabathia (19-8, 3.00 ERA, 1.23 WHIP) to keep the Tigers at bay, and hopefully put the Yankees up in the short series. As I referenced earlier, the Yankees led the league with 222 homers; the reigning Home Run Derby champion Curtis Granderson led the team with 41, followed by Mark Teixeira with 39, Robinson Cano with 28, and Nick Swisher with 23.

We know both of these teams have great starting pitching and great hitting, I feel this series is going to come down to the relievers- especially Detroit’s hyper energetic closer who converted a perfect 49 saves in 49 opportunities, and the legendary Mariano Rivera who converted 44 saves in 49 opportunities, and oh by the way set the league’s all time career record of 603 saves. My pick: due to the rest of the Yankees bullpen showing themselves to be suspect this season, I’m going to pick the Tigers to win in 5.

I knew today was going to be good. I just didn’t know it was going to be this good. I spent the last few hours of my life sitting directly in front of my television watching baseball, with my laptop in front of me feeding information to me about the games I couldn’t watch. As a Rays fan, I settled in to watch the Rays put up a big number against rookie pitcher Dellin Betences hoping to clinch the Wild Card spot tonight, and at the same time as a Cubs fan keeping tabs on the Cardinals/Astros and Phillies/Braves rooting against the Cardinals. David Price started off the game struggling, but only allowed one run in the first inning, so the Rays were still in it, I hadn’t given up hope yet. And then the Mark Teixeira grand slam in the second inning, that was deflating.

Up by five runs, Joe Girardi appeared to no longer be too occupied with winning the game, than with exercising his pitchers. Seriously though, who sends out eleven pitchers in a regular season game? Anyway, I kept watching the Rays game hoping for a comeback and all I got was more pain; Mark Teixeira hits another home run to stretch the lead to 6 in the fourth, and then Andruw Jones sends another one deep to make it 7-0 Yankees in the fifth. At this point, I had had enough, I picked up my remote and flipped over to the Cardinals/Astros game to see what was happening there, and to not watch the Rays. Seeing that the Cards were up 7-0 on the Astros also, I knew how this game was going to end and so I began trying to find the Braves game to listen to on the MLB AtBat app on my phone, and being stuck in the middle of nowhere, my mobile network was not supporting this cause.

So, next game on the agenda available on tv: Phillies/Braves, and I tuned in just in time for extras. Read more of this post

Calamity, thy name is the Wild Card race. At the beginning of this month, both the Boston Red Sox and Atlanta Braves held an 8.5 game lead in the Wild Card over the Tampa Bay Rays and St. Louis Cardinals respectively. The Red Sox saw their AL Wild Card dwindle to just a 3.0 game lead in 11 days and it hasn’t been over 4.0 games since then. The Braves on the other hand saw their lead drop to 4.5 games in the same amount of time and kept their lead above 3.0 games until September 19th when Chipper Jones “lost a ground ball in the lights” that set the Marlins up for a 2-run walk off home run in the 9th. And now, today with the Red Sox/Yankees game still in the balance the Sox hold a 0.5 game lead over the Rays, and the Braves hold a 1.0 game lead over the Cardinals. Read more of this post

It’s really tough not to like the MLB All Star Game. It accomplishes what I see as the fundamentals of an all star game: have every team is represented, every player plays, high amount of fan involvement. And I know you’re thinking, every other ASG does the same thing, what sets this one apart? The answer is defense. By the very nature of baseball, you are forced to play defense if you want to score (and if you don’t field an easy fly ball or grounder coming towards you, you’re either a terrible fielder, or just lazy). With that said, it’s defense that keeps the All Star Game from just being an All Star Affair like in the NBA for example. In the NBA ASG there is no defense to be found, you’ll see shooting guards get down in a defensive stance, and then just watch their man drive right past them for an easy dunk, and this is why I can’t watch the NBA All Star Game for more than 10 minutes.

With that said, all star games are designed to be offensive showcases, and you get that in the MLB game along with great defensive plays (a la Jose Bautista, or Torii Hunter), and it keeps the game from getting completely out of hand and keeps the viewer engaged. However, one of the main factors that keeps the viewer engaged is that the MLB all star game actually means something, in that the winning side gets home field advantage in the World Series for their league. And I think that’s dumb. Home field advantage in the World Series should be determined by the team with the best record, however if they truly have the best record then there should be no problem of them winning. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I don’t enjoy this caveat of the All Star Game that gives the players something to play for other than bragging rights, I’m simply saying it’s dumb. But let’s actually get to the game itself. Read more of this post